Manage your subscription

Ice-loving sea anemones found in Antarctica

By Catherine de Lange

TALK about being chilled out&colon; a species of sea anemone has been found on the underside of Antarctica’s ice sheets. They are the only marine animals known to live embedded in ice, and no one is sure how they survive.

Frank Rack of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and colleagues made the surprise find when they drilled through the ice for a geological study. They were using a camera attached to a remote-controlled drill to explore the underside of the Ross Ice Shelf when they discovered large numbers of the white anemones, which they christened Edwardsiella andrillae, burrowed inside the ice shelf with only their tentacles dangling into the water.

Marymegan Daly at the Ohio State University analysed samples, but dissecting the creatures revealed little – they looked just like other anemones (PLoS One, doi.org/qnk). Other species burrow into surfaces by inching their bodies in or digging with their tentacles, but ice should be too hard, says Daly, who thinks the new species may secrete chemicals to dissolve the ice. It is also unclear how they survive without freezing, and how they reproduce.

This article appeared in print under the headline “Ice-loving anemone found in Antarctica”